We study the political determination of the proportion of students attending university when access to higher education is rationed by admission tests. Parents differ in income and in the ability of their unique child. They vote over the minimum ability level required to attend public...

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

We study a classic mechanism design problem: How to organize trade between two privately informed parties. We characterize an optimal mechanism under selfish preferences and present experimental evidence that, under such a mechanism, a non-negligible fraction of individuals deviates from the...

We study the role of self-interest and social preferences in referenda. Our analysis is based on collective purchasing decisions of university students on deep-discount flat rate tickets for public transportation and culture. Individual usage data allows quantifying monetary benefits associated...

We experimentally study the influence of local information conditions on elite capture and social exclusion in community-based development schemes with heterogeneous groups. Not only information on the distribution of aid resources through community-based schemes, but also information on who...

This paper discusses a number of issues that will become increasingly important nowthat the concept of marginal external cost pricing becomes more likely to be implementedas a policy strategy in transport in reality. The first part of the paper deals with thelong-run efficiency of marginal...

This paper studies the second-best problem where not all links of acongested transportation network can be tolled. The second-best taxrule for this problem is derived for general static networks, so thatthe solution presented is valid for any graph of the network, and forany set of tolling...

For several decades growth of traffic volumes has outstrippedinvestments inroad infrastructure. The result has been a relentless increase intrafficcongestion. This paper reviews the economic principles behindcongestionpricing in static and dynamic settings, which derive from thebenefits...

This paper considers the second-best problem where not all links of a congested transportation networkcan be tolled. The paper builds on earlier work, in which the second-best tax rule for this problem wasderived for general static networks, so that the solution presented is valid for any graph...